1,000 Dollars & an Idea: Entrepreneur to Billionaire

"My work is to create companies and build them," writes Sam Wyly in this candid, engrossing memoir, which reveals how he established and expanded companies on the leading edge of advancements in technology, energy, retail, and investments over the last 45 years.

How to Be a Billionaire: Proven Strategies from the Titans of Wealth

How to Be a Billionaire is the first comprehensive picture of the real strategies and tactics that built the great business fortunes of modern times. Packed with engaging accounts of titans like Ross Perot, Richard Branson, and Phil Anschutz, it will show you principles that can increase your wealth and business acumen to the mogul level.

How Chuck Feeney Made and Gave Away a Fortune: The Billionaire Who Wasn't

In 1988 Forbes magazine hailed Chuck Feeney as the 23rd richest American alive. No one knew until then that he was extremely wealthy. Or was he? Born during the Depression in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Feeney had made a fortune as co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers, the world's largest duty-free retail chain. How he did it is one of the great untold retail stories of modern times. The greater untold story is that Feeney had in fact given away his fortune, in its totality, to endow Atlantic Philanthropies - one of the most generous and secretive philanthropic funds in the world.

King Icahn: The Biography of a Renegade Capitalist

In this dramatic portrait of legendary and, until now, secretive financier Carl Icahn, best-selling business writer Mark Stevens takes us behind the scenes of some of the biggest deals in U.S. corporate history. A fascinating tale with a cast of characters that includes Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, T. Boone Pickens, Dennis Levine, and most of the other key players of the '70s and '80s takeover era, King Icahn is the first biography of the business buccaneer who changed the course of corporate America.

6 Months to 6 Figures

Peter Voogd, who has been labeled the leading authority for Gen Y leadership, reveals the exact strategies he's used to go from dead broke to over six figures within six months. Peter has trained over 4,000 entrepreneurs, and built an eight-million-dollar sales organization by age 27. If you're one of the select few who are serious about success, this book will change the game for you, regardless of what industry you're in.

Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur

When anyone can start a business (when everyone is running their career like a business), it begs a question. This is your one chance at life, you can have anything you want, what is worth doing? Most people don't know why they're doing what they're doing. They imitate others, go with the flow, and follow paths without making their own. They spend decades in pursuit of something that someone convinced them they should want, without realizing that it won't make them happy. Anything You Want is a manifesto about living life, appreciating enough, and doing what matters.

Call Me Ted

An innovative entrepreneur, outspoken nonconformist, and groundbreaking philanthropist, Ted Turner is truly a living legend, and now, for the first time, he reveals his personal story. From his difficult childhood to the successful launch of his media empire to the catastrophic AOL/Time Warner deal, Turner spares no details or feelings and takes the reader along on a wild and sometimes bumpy ride.

The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur: The Tell-it-Like-it-is Guide to Cleaning Up in Business, Even if You Are at the End of Your Roll

"Never started a company before? Struggling with little or no cash? Have no experience, no baseline to judge your progress against? Thank God! You've got a shot at making this work." So says Mike Michalowicz, author of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, a business book that is so uniquely useful, so raw and entertaining, it reads like the brainchild of Steve Jobs and Chris Rock.

Become an Idea Machine: Because Ideas Are the Currency of the 21st Century

How do I transform my life? The answer is simple: come up with 10 ideas a day. It doesn't matter if they are good or bad, the key is to exercise your "idea muscle", to keep it toned, and in great shape.

The International Bank of Bob: Connecting Our World One $25 Kiva Loan at a Time

Hired by ForbesTraveler.com to review some of the most luxurious accommodations on Earth, and then inspired by a chance encounter in Dubai with the impoverished workers whose backbreaking jobs create such opulence, Bob Harris had an epiphany: He would turn his own good fortune into an effort to make lives like theirs better.

The First Billion is the Hardest: Reflections on a Life of Comebacks and America's Energy Future

From a businessman who is extraordinarily humble yet is considered one of the world's most visionary, The First Billion Is the Hardest is both a riveting account of a life spent pulling off improbable triumphs and a report back from the front of the global energy and natural-resource wars - of vital interest to anyone who has a stake in America's future.

Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist

Starting from scratch, simply by picking stocks and companies for investment, Warren Buffett amassed one of the epochal fortunes of the twentieth century - an astounding net worth of $10 billion and counting. His awesome investment record has made him a cult figure popularly known for his seeming contradictions: a billionaire who has a modest lifestyle, a phenomenally successful investor who eschews the revolving-door trading of modern Wall Street, a brilliant dealmaker who cultivates a homespun aura.

Imagine what Atari might have achieved if Steve Jobs had stayed there to develop the first massmarket personal computer. Or what Steve Case might have done for PepsiCo if he hadn't left for a gaming start-up that eventually became AOL. What if Salomon Brothers had kept Michael Bloomberg, or Bear Stearns had exploited the inventive ideas of Stephen Ross? Scores of top-tier entrepreneurs worked for established corporations before they struck out on their own and became self-made billionaires.

Wealth Without a Job: Freedom and Security Beyond the 9 to 5 Lifestyle

The author of this system, Andy Fuehl, was downsized and unemployed after devoting over 15 years to corporate America. Yet, he became a millionaire in less than three years as a result of using the accelerated subconscious reprogramming technology and specific strategies, behaviors, and beliefs of the ultra-wealthy that you'll be using in this system.

Delegation & Supervision: The Brian Tracy Success Library

Managers are judged by results - and as a manager, those results hinge on your ability to delegate and supervise. You’ll be surprised at how efficient your team becomes when you master Brian Tracy’s essential skills. This indispensable guide reveals his 21 time-tested ways to boost performance, including how to: Define work, assign it, and set measurable, targeted standards for performance; Match skills to job requirements....

Andrew Carnegie

The Scottish-born son of a failed weaver and a mother who supported the family by binding shoes, Andrew Carnegie was the embodiment of the American dream. In his rise from a job as a bobbin boy in a cotton factory to being the richest man in the world, he was single-minded, relentless and a major player in some of the most violent and notorious labor strikes of the time. The prototype of today's billionaire, he was a visionary in the way he earned his money and in the way he gave it away.

The New Tycoons: Inside the Trillion Dollar Private Equity Industry That Owns Everything

What do Dunkin' Donuts, J. Crew, Toys "R" Us, and Burger King have in common? They are all currently or just recently were owned, operated, and controlled by private equity firms. The New Tycoons: Inside the Trillion Dollar Private Equity Industry That Owns Everything takes the listener behind the scenes of these firms: their famous billionaire founders, the overlapping stories of their creation and evolution, and the outsized ambitions that led a group of clever bankers from small shops into powerhouse titans of capital.

How to Get Rich

"Making money is a knack, a knack that can be acquired. And if someone like me can become rich, then so can you - no matter what your present circumstances. Here is how I did it and what I learned along the way." So writes Felix Dennis, who believes that almost anyone of reasonable intelligence can become rich, given sufficient motivation and application. How To Get Rich is a distillation of his business wisdom. Primarily concerned with the step-by-step creation of wealth, it ruthlessly dissects the business failures and financial triumphs of "a South London lad who became rich virtually by accident".

Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World

We struggle to manage complexity every day. We follow intricate diets to lose weight, juggle multiple remotes to operate our home entertainment systems, face proliferating data at the office, and hack through thickets of regulation at tax time. But complexity isn't destiny. Sull and Eisenhardt argue there's a better way: by developing a few simple yet effective rules, you can tackle even the most complex problems.

Publisher's Summary

"My work is to create companies and build them," writes Sam Wyly in this candid, engrossing memoir, which reveals how he established and expanded companies on the leading edge of advancements in technology, energy, retail, and investments over the last 45 years.

Wyly shares the process, relationships, struggles, and strategies that have made him one of the 1,000 wealthiest people in the world. From the hardships his parents faced trying to hold on to the family cotton farm during the Depression to the coaching he received on the high school football field, this self-made billionaire describes how his early years in Louisiana prepared him for what lay ahead. His sales experience with IBM and Honeywell in Dallas in the early 1960s gave him the idea to start the first "computer utility". Risking $1,000 of his savings, he founded University Computing in 1963 and took it public two years later, becoming a millionaire at the age of 30.

Part autobiography and part inspirational business guide, this audio is full of refreshing insights about what it takes to create, grow, and build successful companies.

I bought this book in a batch purchase of business books. I was looking for inspirations & ideas. To be honest, I got sucked in by the title, thinking it was a business book. Its a biography.
Overall, there were some small learning moments for me, but most of my experience with this book felt like a man politely boasting of his very successful career.
At first, I was discouraged by the amount of biography over business ideas. However, when I did a little homework on the book, I realized it was more of a bio so I adjusted my expectations. Then the book teased me with business "nuggets" admidst all of the stories. I say "teased" because a chapter will start off by telling a story that feels like a backdrop for a good business lesson. However, instead of pointing out how his struggles & successes can apply to you and me, the chapter would just end with an, "...and that's how I was successful with that business."

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